Maggie Grace In 'Lockout' Mode With Luc Besson

EXCLUSIVE: Frenchman Luc Besson has built Europacorp by hatching moderately priced thrillers, and populating them with casts, writers and directors he works with over and over. Maggie Grace, last seen as the kidnapped teenager in the Besson-Robert Mark Kamen collaboration Taken that launched director Pierre Morel’s star, has signed on for Lockout, a drama that Sony Pictures Entertainment is in talks to distribute. The picture transports a Taken-like premise to outer space. Besson hatched the script with directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger. Guy Pearceis attached to play a man wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. He’s offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates. Grace’s UTA agents just closed a deal for her to play the president’s daughter. Sony has a long relationship with Besson, distributing The Professional and The Fifth Element. Shooting starts September 7.

Grace is also attached to Taken 2 and she completed the Dwayne Johnson-starrer Faster for CBS Films and stars in The Experiment for Sony.